This denial was hardly necessary. The despatches themselves plainly showed that Erskine, having set his heart on effecting a treaty, used every argument that could have weight with Englishmen, and dwelt particularly upon the point--which he well knew to be a dogma of British politics--that President Jefferson had French sympathies, whereas Madison’s sympathies were English. If Erskine had been a Tory, he would have known better than to suppose that Perceval’s acts were in any way due to Jefferson or his prejudices; but the British minister wished to employ all the arguments that could aid his purpose; and to do him justice, he used without stint that argument which his British instincts told him would be most convincing,--the single word, War. “I ascertained from Mr. Madison,” he wrote November 26,[338] “that ... the Report of the Committee seemed distinctly to announce that the ULTIMATE and only effectual mode of resisting the aggressions of the belligerents would be by a _war_.” If Canning could be panic-struck by italics and capital letters, Erskine meant to excite his worst alarms. Perhaps Madison was a little the accomplice of these tactics; for at the moment when he threatened war in language the most menacing, the future President was trembling lest Congress should abjectly submit to British orders. Erskine’s despatches early in December echoed the official words of Madison, Gallatin, and Robert Smith, but gave little idea of their difficulties. The same tactics marked his next letters. Jan. 1, 1809, he wrote to Canning[339] that the bill which was to carry into effect the Resolutions of Campbell’s Report had been laid before the House:-- “You will observe, sir, that the provisions of this bill are exactly such as this Government informed me would be adopted, and which I detailed to you in my despatches by the last month’s packet. On these measures, and a strict enforcement of the embargo, the Government and Congress have determined to rely for a short time, in the hope that some events in Europe may take place to enable them to extricate themselves from their present highly embarrassing situation. It is now universally acknowledged that the Embargo Act must be raised by next summer; and nearly all the members of the ruling party declare that unless the belligerent Powers should remove their restrictions upon neutral commerce before that time, it will be incumbent upon the United States to adopt measures of hostility toward such of those Powers as may continue their aggressions.”